USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Trinity church in the city of Boston, Massachusetts : 1733-1933 > Part 4
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It was a noble building in its day. It was one of the first of the Gothic buildings of this country which were built after Church architecture had begun to waken and aspire, and few that followed it equalled its dignity and calm impressiveness. - The lighter and more fantastic styles of building sprang up in the city. The timber spires that made believe that they were stone, leaped up with unnatural levity into the sky; the cheap stone sculpture covered and deformed great, feeble fronts; the reign of imitation came; and in the midst of all of them Trinity stood, in its exterior at least, strong, genuine, solid, with its great rough stones, its broad, bold bands of sculpture, its bat-
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REV. GEORGE WASHINGTON DOANE SIXTH RECTOR
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tlemented tower, like a great castle of the truth,- grim, no doubt, and profoundly serious, but yet able to win from those who worshiped there for years, an affectionate confidence, and even a tender, yearning love. It lost, in course of time, its personal association with Dr. Gardiner, as this building will lose in time its immediate connection with those who have been most interested in its erection, but Dr. Doane, in 1830, said, in the then new Trinity, of the just departed minister,- "This noble edifice is the enduring monument of his per- formances." He had lived only to begin his services there after its consecration, when death summoned him away.
The death of Dr. Gardiner was followed by a somewhat rapid change of ministers for a few years. Dr. George W. Doane became Rector, and Dr. John Henry Hopkins, in the follow- ing year, was made assistant. In the next year, the Rector was made Bishop of New Jersey, and his assistant, Bishop of Ver- mont. In 1833, the Rev. Dr. Jonathan M. Wainwright was elected Rector, and for five years, which many of you that listen to me still gratefully remember, he served the parish, enriching its life with his graceful culture, and conscientious, pastoral care. Then he returned to New York, where he was shortly made Bishop. Two years later, with the election of the Rev. Dr. Manton Eastburn, began a third of those long and notable ministries, which have characterized the history of Trinity Church.
But by this time a change had come over the theology and preaching of the English Church. The great revival move- ments of the last quarter of the eighteenth century had taken place. Methodism had shaken the torpid Church from end to end. The evangelical revival, with its sturdy and earnest lead- ers and representatives, Wilberforce, Newton, Romaine and Simeon, and Henry Martyn and Venn, had filled men's hearts with the spirit of piety and prayer. The Church in this coun- try had felt the reawakened life. Whitefield had been here in Boston, and though he might not be allowed, Church of Eng-
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land minister as he was, to preach in Trinity, he had aroused a great revival.
The evangelical movement had its zealous men here and there throughout the land. The peculiarities of that movement were an earnest insistence upon doctrine, and upon personal spiritual experience, of neither of which had the previous gen- eration made very much. Man's fallen state, his utter hope- lessness, the vicarious atonement, the supernatural conversion, the work of the Holy Spirit, -these were the truths which the men of those days, who were what were called evangeli- cal men, urged with the force of vehement belief upon their hearers. They were great truths. There were crude, hard and untrue statements of them very often, but they went deep; they laid hold upon the souls and consciences of men. They created most profound experiences. They made many great ministers and noble Christians. It was indeed the work of God.
To those of you who were his parishioners and friends, who heard him preach year after year, and knew what lay nearest to his heart, I need not say how entirely Bishop East- burn was a man of this movement. His whole life was full of it. He had preached its Gospel in New York with wonderful success and power. He bore his testimony to it to the last in Boston. A faith that was very beautiful in its childlike reli- ance upon God; a sturdy courage which would have wel- comed the martyrdom of more violent days ; a complete, un- questioning, unchanging loyalty to the ideas which he had once accepted; a deep personal piety, which, knowing the happiness of divine communion, desired that blessedness for " other souls; a wide sympathy for all of every name who were working for the ends which he loved and desired; these, with his kindly heart and constancy in friendship, made the power of the long ministry of Bishop Eastburn. The teaching of this parish through twenty-six years was most direct and simple. There was a dread, even, of other forms in which the same awakening of spiritual life was manifest. The High Church-
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REV. JONATHAN MAYHEW WAINWRIGHT SEVENTH RECTOR
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man and the Broad Churchman found no tolerance. But the preacher was one whom all men honored, whose strong moral force impressed the young and old, whose sturdy indepen- dence was like a strong east wind, and who went to his re- ward crowned with the love of many and the respect of all. It seems but yesterday that his familiar figure passed away. His voice is still fresh in our ears. The old Church comes back, and he stands there in its pulpit, as he must always stand, among the most marked and vigorous figures in our parish history. It would not be right to renew our Church life with- out cordial remembrance of his strength and faithfulness. To him, too, we will give a window in our chancel; and between the memories of Parker and Gardiner, the memory of East- burn shall shine, the central memory of the Church he served so long.
Bishop Eastburn's ministry was illustrated by a line of assistants who, among the foremost men of our Episcopal Church, have done much for the parish, and left their mem- ory among us. Dr. Watson, Bishop Clark, Dr. John Cotton Smith, Dr. Mercer, Dr. Potter, have won successively the con- fidence and grateful recollection of the parish.
My story is almost done. What has come since the resig- nation of Bishop Eastburn in 1868 is yet too new for history. They are years that always must be memorable. The first talk of the removal, the discussions that ensued, the first study of plans in the spring of 1872, the fire that swept the old Church off at four o'clock on the morning of that terrible Sunday the ioth of November of the same year, the driving of the first piles here in 1873, the long summer months of work and winter months of waiting and thinking, the worship of the parish in the hospitable Technological Hall, the patience and faith and generosity of the people, and finally, the noble liber- ality which, in these last weeks, has paid for the great work which had been done, and then the Consecration of last Fri- day, all these he who shall preach the sermon in this house,
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then grown venerable with mellowing time, a hundred years from to-day, will gather up with reverent hand, as I have gathered now the story of the century and a half that is already gone. It is mine only to note with thankfulness, which I can- not express, the glorious consummation of our hopes, and in one word to indicate that which no accumulation of words could tell,-the endless debt of this parish to those who for five anxious years have given their time and care, almost their whole lives, to the great labor.
I cannot resist the temptation to lay my remembrance on the grave of him who was with us when our work began, and whose death was the great loss which added new dark- ness to our darkest days. I would fain associate the name of Mr. Dexter with the opening of this new Church, which he saw in faith and for which he so cordially labored and hoped. But it is our Building Committee, and the other members of that body will only echo my feeble tribute when I say that it is the Executive Committee of three, to whom, under God, the coming generations of this parish will owe their dear and noble Church, and toward whom we all bear a debt of grati- tude to-day which nothing ever can begin to pay. May God's blessing be on them, as they see the great completion of their labors.
The noble structure shall speak the genius of the architect. Its glowing walls declare the artist's inspiration. Its unshaken solidity proclaim the builder's skill and care, but only the grat- itude of the people's hearts and the good work that shall be done here, can rightly honor the devotion of those who so long have been the wise and willing servants of the parish.
And so I close this hurried sketch of the long history of Trinity. I look back from this pulpit where I stand to-day, and all this is behind us. I see those who have gone before me, and their ministries come crowding round me when I speak. I see the congregations ofthe past, and the long-vanished pews in which they sat. And out of all there rises up one strong im-
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pression which covers all the history. For that impression I thank God in the name of Trinity. It is an impression of manly vigor; of strenuous, faithful character. Men may read over this history which we have to show them, and say that they miss this or that, but one thing every man who reads must find there. It is full of manliness. These men of whom I have spoken to you this morning were real men. Davenport, Hooper, Walter, Parker, Gardiner, Eastburn, they all had strong con- victions, true honesty, independent hearts. There is not one of them that did not say the thing he thought. There is not one breath of cant in all our history. There is no weak spot of un- reality, or fantasticalness, or nonsense, anywhere. And so it seems to be no unfit thing that the architecture of our par- ish, whether in the old Church in Summer street, or in this new and noble temple, should be of the strong, and solid, and massive sort. There has been little that was light and graceful, little of the inspired speculation of genius or of the play of frolicsome fancy in our annals. It has been the sturdy, genuine strength of sense and character. Men whom other men learned to respect, have given the parish a strong though quiet power in the community. It is in this true ring, this sense of genuine and generous humanity, this strong, live, human healthiness, that the clearest impression of our parish lies. On its sound manliness the power of godliness has shone, and made it good to look back upon, as we look back upon it now, in its clear, intelligible, robust, straightforward dignity.
With so much character and common sense, acting within that wide comprehensiveness which is the life and glory of our Church, it is not strange that our parish should have borne witness in itself of the changes in the world of thought and action which went on all about her. She had her men of the eighteenth century, of its first half and its second half, so dif- ferent from one another. She has had her men of the nine- teenth century too.She had for her minister one of the rep- resentative evangelical men of our Church in this country.
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She is ready for whatever newest and truest view of His truth God may manifest to His people in the years to come.She was the only Church of our communion in Boston where a patriot could pray during the Revolution. Nor did her pulpit fail of its duty in the war of the Rebellion. Men have called her the very pattern of conservatism. But as I look back upon her his- tory, I see in her a true conformity to the varying times. Not the conformity of a weathercock, which shifts with every zephyr, but the conformity of the deep laden ship, that feels the profound tide, and knows the difference between it and the ripples which are on the surface of the wave.
And to-day I do not believe that there is any congregation in our town which, having positive convictions of the Chris- tian truths, is more ready, nay, more earnestly waiting for fuller light, for richer, deeper knowledge of our Lord than it has yet attained, than is this Church of ours. That is what we want,-strong, deep convictions which are unshakable, and then a glad and constant expectation of new and richer light from God forever ; a perfect assurance of the safety of the ship in which we sail, and then a perfect willingness to sail into whatever new seas God may open to us ; an absolute certainty of the sufficiency of Christ, and then a passionate desire that no Christ of our own fancy may satisfy us, that He may show Himself to us more and more completely as He really is; the rock under our feet and the limitless air over our heads. O, let us pray that both may become more perfect to us in our new career, the rock more solid and the air more vast, the truths we hold more certain and more precious; the hope of more light on those truths, the watchfulness for deeper revelations of God, more vigilant and eager. Those be our prayers :- More strength; more light. More constancy ; more progress.
Again, I have mistold the story of the parish, unless you have seen that in it there has been a continual presence of earnest piety. That has been the real unity of our parish life through
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all its changes. The man of the nineteenth century thinks very differently from the man of the eighteenth, but the love with which he worships God, is the same love. The Evangelical has different dogmas from the old Georgian Churchman, but they bow before the same mercy-seat and resist the same tempta- tions by the same grace. We can conceive of a parish going on, the same parish still, though thought shall change and all re- ligious speculation flow in new channels. But if men's souls cease to repent, and trust, and live by the divine communion, all is gone; the Church is dead; the spiritual building crumbles in decay. There has been no such time with us. Always there has been prayer and faith. The stream of belief seems, perhaps, sometimes to run very thin, but always it is there, with strength to widen and deepen when God's time shall come.
It was not far from the time when this Church was founded, that Bishop Butler wrote in England words which seem strange, I think, to us as we read them now. He said, "It has come to be taken for granted, by many persons, that Chris- tianity is not so much a matter of inquiry, but that it is now at length discovered to be fictitious." And, after all that, see what life came out of what men called dead. A great many people are saying now what people used to say in Bishop But- ler's day, but it is no truer now than it was then. The signs of spiritual revival are already in the air and in the sky. It must be the piety, the love and faith of Christian men and women, the religion of the Churches, that runs through all times and makes the unbroken line to which the departures always re- turn, and round which all the revivals congregate.
And, yet once more, everyone can see who reads our his- tory, how truly ours has always been a parish Church. A body of worshipers, bound together by the habits of their worship, knowing each other as the people of the same Trinity Church, bearing one another's burdens, sharing one another's joys, baptized, confirmed, married, and hoping to be buried in the old parish Church,-this, the people who have called this
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Church their Church, have always been. Nay, more than this. There are few parishes where the hereditary chains are so many and so strong. To many and many a worshiper, this par- ish is dear because it is where his fathers worshiped. The names that stand on our pew roll to-day repeat, in very large degree, the names of those whose good deeds stand thick along our records, and at whose entrance into the higher life our Church both sorrowed and rejoiced.
I am very thankful for this. I would not have, and I am sure that you would not have, our close connection and our historical associations broken. We are a parish. We will not degenerate and dissipate into an audience. Very sacred is our re- lation to each other. But I know that you will more than ąc- cept under the great, glowing, all-embracing hospitality ofthis bounteous roof, you will enthusiastically assert, that such a Church as this, has no right to exist, or to think that it exists, for any limited company who own its pews. It would not be a Christian parish if it harbored such a thought. No, let the world come in. Let all men hear, if they will, the truths we love. Let no soul go unsaved through any selfishness of ours. These galleries set free forever, and the assurance of what larger welcome may be needed and may be in our power to supply, bear witness that our Church accepts her responsibilities, and will try to speak the Gospel of the Lord she loves to all who will come and hear.
These ideas are more familiar and more pressing in our days, than they were in our fathers'. Through our fathers' wisdom and devotion, we must become wiser and more devoted than they. Friends, we must rise to thoughts beyond our fathers, or we are not our fathers' worthy children. Not to do in our days just what our fathers did long ago, but to live as truly up to our light as our fathers lived up to theirs,-that is what it is to be worthy of our fathers. The Church has new standards, new ambitions, new ideas of work. This is the modern notion of a Church, -not luxury, but work. God help us to cast off
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every thing old and avoid every thing new which can keep our Church from doing perfectly that great work which we can hear our Lord calling her to do for Him.
And so may the Lord our God be with us as He was with our fathers. Let Him not leave us nor forsake us. In all the happy light of this first Sunday, let us bind ourselves anew to- gether, as minister and people, and then as a grateful parish de- vote ourselves anew to Him. May He teach us of His Father- hood. May He give us the salvation of His Son. May He fill us with His Holy Spirit. And so make this Church the Church of the Trinity forever.
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III RT. REV. MANTON EASTBURN, D.D. Eighth Rector of Trinity Church 1842-1868 BY RT. REV. WILLIAM LAWRENCE, D.D. Bishop of Massachusetts, 1893-1927
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Manton Eastburn
G OOD old Bishop Griswold, who had patiently and with the utmost devotion travelled over the Eastern Diocese for a generation, was beginning to feel his years: indeed his vitality was ebbing, and it is no wonder. From Rhode Island, through Massachusetts including Berk- shire, through Maine and New Hampshire, occasionally en- tering Vermont, he had travelled by team, stagecoach, and open sleigh in summer and winter: putting up in taverns, enter- tained by kind people in frigid spare rooms, eating such fare as was put before him. In later years the railroads provided him with a quicker but jolting transit, with cars overheated by a red-hot stove at either end, and a roof so low that one could touch it. The churches too, with rare exceptions, were poorly constructed ; the organs, where there were such, were wheezy, and the blower boy was sometimes late or absent; the choir, a quartette, feeling its own importance upon the visitation, gave to the bishop and not to the Lord their sonorous anthems and voices; the confirmation classes were small; and the people, having driven in from the country in the brisk air, were heavy with sleep as they felt the close atmosphere of the church. However, on he went from week to week, and after long ab- sences rested at his own fireside.
He was a pastor indeed, and was beloved by all: a man of peace and religious spirit; he had but little interest in the the- ological battles roaring about him, especially in the orthodox and liberalcongregationsthroughout New England ; nor could his temper be stirred by the clashes of the Evangelicals and the supporters of the Oxford, Tractarian, or High Church move- ments. They were fought out in England, and England was far away across the Atlantic.
Hence, in 1842, at the annual Diocesan Convention, he asked that he might have an assistant. Influential Churchmen, especially in Boston, conferred upon the subject : the support of
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a second bishop was a serious matter, and a happy solution was arrived at whereby Trinity Parish, Boston, would elect the as- sistant bishop as its rector, and thus relieve the diocese of a large part of its financial burden, it being understood that for the present an assistant to the rector would undertake such du- ties as would enable the new bishop to make his visitations and meet his other episcopal responsibilities. These were very moderate compared with the present duties of bishops. Inas- much as for lack of a bishop in these Colonies and until after the Revolution there had never been a confirmation, and ex- cepting those who had been confirmed in England before their immigration there was not a confirmed person in all the churches, the communicants were unconfirmed, though ready to be confirmed; hence there was by general consent little pressure for annual confirmations: indeed Bishop Parker, sec- ond bishop of the diocese, and also rector of Trinity Church, died two months after his consecration having never per- formed an episcopal act.
If the new bishop was to be rector of Trinity Church as well as bishop he must be such a man as would commend himself to the city people as well as those in the smaller towns, a strong preacher and agreeable in social life.
There was at that time in New York a man rising in the people's favor as preacher and leader, Manton Eastburn. He was born in Leeds, England, February 9, 1801, and had come with his parents to the United States when twelve years of age, and almost immediately had entered Columbia College. A col- lege student twelve years old was exceptional, but not so much so as we would now think, for Columbia was then little more than a high school. He graduated in 1817, at sixteen, and later went to the General Theological Seminary, and was ordained in 1822.
After serving as assistant minister of Christ Church, New York, he became the rector of the Church of the Ascension. There were evidently features in his personality which made
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RT. REV. MANTON EASTBURN EIGHTH RECTOR
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his preaching and pastoral offices peculiarly attractive. It was somewhat of a refreshment to people who had only known the tone and language of a raw country to listen to an English enunciation and style: for in these and some other respects Manton Eastburn never ceased to be an Englishman. He was handsome, very straight and firm, indeed rather stiff in car- riage; he had the full sonorous voice which in those days be- came a pulpit orator ; he could quote the classics and speak in a naturaland familiar way of England's men and scenery, which always warms the hearts of intelligent Americans. He brought with him also a vivid interest in the issues which at the time were rending the Church of England in pieces: for the Church of England has a habit of being rent in pieces every one or two generations, and yet manages to survive and even thrive.
The churches in New England had been torn asunder by the Orthodox and Unitarian battles; New Yorkers, especially those from New England, had an academic interest in these. But New York had more Churchmen and greater interest in ecclesiastical discussions; even they, however, could not get heated upon the subject until Mr. Eastburn came among them. He had no doubt as to where he stood upon the issues of the English Church. The Tractarian movement was of Rome, the work of Satan: if allowed to continue it would destroy the Evangelical faith and tradition which had descended from the Reformation; and while suasion had its place, condemnation and even force must be brought to bear to silence these advo- cates of the Dark Ages and followers of the Scarlet Woman.
Such sentiments spoken by a man of deep convictions, in vivid and dramatic style, were what the Churchmen of New York wanted: these teachings confirmed their faith, upheld the Reformation, and convinced the people that the Episcopal Church could represent history, tradition, dignity, ritual, and also the standard of the Reformation-justification, not by works or by ritual, but by faith.
The preacher was just over forty years of age, in his prime,
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and rising in influence. Hence, when his name was presented at the Diocesan Convention in 1842, he was immediately and unanimously elected assistant bishop.
A house which happened to be next door to that of my father in Pemberton Square was rented for him, and in my father's diary I find: "I went to see Dr. Eastburn on his arrival. He appears as he did last summer, a polished, handsome man of forty: but his great excellence is his high religious feeling and uniform consistency, and constancy in labor to promote the cause of true piety. His wife is an invalid."
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